Tire Wear

[B Hise]

Last week a sponsor gave us some tires. This weekend we corded those tires.

Thing is, these tires are we normally use Hoosiers and our sponsor sent us Goodyears. It seems to me that the goodyears wear much faster than hoosiers. Anyone else experience this?

- Bryan

[James Waltman]

What do the tires look like now?
Anything like these ones:
http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/9971...10160721#99710160721 (http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/99710160721/r/99710160721#99710160721)

[B Hise]

They didnt split in half at all. They wore down to the cords evenly across the tire width. Granted we were running the car for a good 4-5 hours today but I've never gone through a set of Hoosiers that fast before.

Bryan

[BeaverGuy]

The expected lifetime of Goodyears is one full set of dynamic events. That said one day is a bit short unless the car was actually running the full five hours.

[B Hise]

It ran the majority of the five hours. About four when you factor in driver changes, pulling data, lunch etc.

Short day on course yes, but theres plenty of other places to do work.

Bryan

[Jon_Dal]

We're expecting arrival of our Michelin FSAE tires any day now. Is there anything special we should know about them? I wouldn't have thought there was but after looking at those pictures I'm not so sure....

[PatClarke]

Jon-Dal,
I wasn't aware that Michelin made FSAE specific tyres?? Or are you using one of their generic road racing tyres?
One thing to be aware of is that Michelins are radial ply tyres, whereas Goodyear and Hoosier are usually (not always) bias ply tyres.
I am interested to hear if Michelin have made an FSAE type tyre available.
Thanks
Pat Clarke

[ben]

I'd be interested too. As a rule Michelin run pretty hard compounds so it'll be interesting to see if any of their stuff works on an FSAE car.

Didn't Clemson run Mich a couple of years ago? I seem to remember seeing some as they were opposite us in the Silverdome.

Ben

[Jon_Dal]

We're kind of in a unique situation here in Halifax. We have 3 Michelin plants very near by. I was surprised to learn that they make tires for FSAE as well. They are not, however, available for purchase to the best of my knowledge. They make them in their race shop so I'm told. The team from North (or South?) Carolina where Michelin is based uses them as well. I'm asuming that's Clemson? They're not very common so it seems there is not a whole lot of info around on them.

[Buckingham]

Its very easy to wear out a set of goodyears quickly if you don't have a lot of experience with them.

[Dr Claw]

Clemson has, or at least HAD an exclusive partnership with Michelin. They've traditionaly been the only ones that have ever ran them, but good to see someone else on them.

Ever have your gastank drain pitcock open while your driving? It convienently sprayed directly onto one of the rear tyres causing a 300 ft burnout and instant cords.

[Kevin Hayward]

Back when UWA was using the R065's we had to be very careful with tire wear.

The tires were very heat cycle dependant. If you went out and ran hard on stickers you would get amazing laptimes straight up. However the wear rate was quite high.

However our major problems with tire wear came from camber and caster settings. The Goodyears were a lot more camber sensitive than the Hoosiers. Bad settings would just tear them apart.

The wear was never an issue at comps, and you didn't want many heat cycles on a Goodyear going into Endurance. However to make them last for testing we would heat cycle them a day before we used them heavily, without that they would be useless after a day of running. With the heat cycle we could get 2 days running.

Kev

[RacingManiac]

Goodyears: Yeah we've ran them to the cord before, typically after 1-2 long test day they are pretty much done.

Michelins: we ran on some used Formula Renault(harder) and Formula BMW(softer) fronts before(shakedown, driver training...etc). They are the same size as most FSAE tire(13 inch wheel, 20 inch OD, and 6-7 inch wide). Quite a bit harder than anything we'd usually run. We usually get no wear with them, and they are not that grippy. I don't think Michelin make specific FSAE tire, so you might be getting one of those...

[Jon_Dal]

well that doesn't sound so great. is that what clemson has used? I suppose maybe it'd be more useful if I just talked to Clemson....

[RiNaZ]

Im pretty sure it's clemson who was using Michelin. There was this guy who had his daughter joining an FSAE team in Duke U. He was asking me about Michelin tyres which i wasnt aware of. So i told him to ask around. Here's what he got from Michelin ...

"here is our situation regarding the Formula SAE tires. In the past, we never had any involvement in that formula. A few months ago, we were contacted by the Clemson people with whom we have been involved in the past (explains why they list us as a sponsor, that was prior to the SAE discussion).

Regarding the formula SAE, we do not have a tire specifically developed for such an application. The closest fit is a commercial racing tire designed and manufactured by our French colleagues for track applications. The size is 16/53-13, meaning 16cm wide, 53cm diameter, 13" seat (approx. dimensions).

At the time of the discussions with Clemson, we did not have any idea on how these tires would perform on such cars as the application (weight, weight ratio,HP...) is somewhat different from the original application (front for the Formula Renault).

So what we agreed to do with Clemson is to use them this coming year as a "test team". Preliminary testing comparing these tires with competitors showed that they can be competitive. As always in racing, it will be a matter of trade-offs between these and the competitors.

Our goal with this season is to determine how these tire perform, and if the results are positive, the plan is to open the access to any team who wants to purchase them (with the limitation of how many tires can be supplied by France).

If the results are not positive, there is no plan as of today to develop any tires for this application My engineering resources are limited right now and this is definitively not a big priority.

So stay tuned and hopefully we'll be able to supply Duke in 04.

Thanks "

I got this email late of 2002. So things might have changed since i last heard about them.

[Garlic]

You guys need to pay more attention. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif Weeks ago a school (not Clemson) had a guy posting some 'look at our cool car' photos and if you looked closely there were Michelins... I thought it was funny nobody noticed!

[Schulberg J]

Did you heat cycle the tires? I would not expect long life unless the tires were properly heat cycled. Goodyear has directions on their website.

[Jon_Dal]

I looked into it a bit more. They are from a Formula BMW I believe. So we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

[PatClarke]

Hi again,
I would never recommend 'spec tyres' for use on a competitive FSAE car.
These are always biased towards life and ability to withstand abuse from unskilled drivers.
They will never be competitive in a sprint type event like FSAE
Regards
Pat

[B Hise]

We didn't heat cycle the tires. For testing and competitions we will scrub in the tires prior to hard running. Looks like the training wheels are going to need the same treatment...

Bryan

[Erich Ohlde]

goodyears are very sensitive to proper break in procedure. Also goodyears are not a unidirectional tire until sufficient break in has taken place. check out goodyear's website for more info.